Chapter 6 - The Midnight Interrogation
As the police cuffed Wendy and led her screaming out the front doors into a waiting cruiser, the heavy iron gates slammed shut behind them, leaving the estate in a ringing, painful silence.
Jessi was curled up on the Persian rug in the living room, her body racked with violent sobs. I stood near the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the red and blue emergency lights flash across the manicured lawn until they faded into the dark Greenwich night.
Every fiber of my being was on edge. The immediate threat inside the house had been neutralized, but the psychological devastation was absolute.
I walked over to Jessi, knelt beside her, and gently placed my hand on her trembling shoulder.
She flinched violently, looking up at me with eyes swollen and bloodshot from crying. "David... please... please believe me. I never betrayed you. I never touched Julian after he faked his death. Fiona is yours. She has your smile, your eyes, your kindness... she is your daughter."
"I love Fiona more than life itself, Jessi," I said softly, helping her up from the floor and guiding her to the sofa. "Nothing on this earth will ever change that. But we need the absolute, unvarnished truth right now. If Julian's legal team has filed petitions in probate court, they have falsified evidence. We need to know exactly what Wendy stole from this house."
Jessi wiped her tears, her hands trembling uncontrollably. "Mom had access to Fiona's pediatric records. She took Fiona to all her dental appointments, her routine checkups... she always insisted on doing it to 'help' me because I was busy running my art foundation. She must have taken DNA swabs, medical charts... everything."
My phone buzzed. It was Marcus calling from the mobile command center outside Julian's warehouse.
"David, we have a major problem," Marcus said, his voice urgent.
"What happened? Did Julian move?"
"Julian's legal team just filed an emergency ex-parte injunction in the Fairfield County Family Court," Marcus explained. "They submitted a fraudulent DNA swab report from an unaccredited private lab in Massachusetts claiming a 99.8% biological match between Julian Sterling and Fiona Vance. Along with it, they filed an emergency petition alleging that you are an 'unfit guardian' holding an abducted heiress against her will."
"On what grounds?!" I demanded, my blood boiling.
"They're using your Chicago flight cancellation and your security lockdown against you. They're claiming you discovered the 'truth' and are preparing to flee the country with the child on your private jet to prevent the Sterling estate from claiming its heir. A corrupt family court judge signed a temporary custody summons. Julian's private security team is en route to your estate right now with private process servers and an armed transport unit."
"They're trying to take Fiona tonight," I realized, my jaw clenching like iron.
"David, this is a coordinated blitz," Marcus warned. "Julian knows Wendy got pinched. He knows his window is closing. If he physically gets Fiona into his custody for even twenty-four hours, he can board a private yacht out of Rhode Island, slip into international waters, and vanish to a non-extradition country while his lawyers drain the ninety-million-dollar trust."
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"Not on my watch," I said coldly. "Marcus, lock down the warehouse perimeter. Do not let Julian leave that brick building under any circumstances."
"Julian isn't in the warehouse, David," Marcus replied, dropping a bomb that made my stomach drop. "Our thermal feeds were looped. Julian slipped out through an underground drainage tunnel fifteen minutes before the FBI arrived. He's mobile. And our satellite tracker shows his convoy heading straight for Greenwich."
